Tag Archives: The Catcher in the Rye

Salinger by Shane Salerno and David Shields is not so much a biography of J.D. Salinger as it is an assortment of press clips and interview excerpts about Salinger. None of the pieces are properly dated or sourced in the main text, aside from the name of the person speaking or writing, so fifty-year-old articles are lined up next to commentary from academics and the thoughts of the actor Edward Norton. Somewhere in between are words from people who actually knew Salinger. In the book’s 500-plus pages, the “authors” contribute maybe 50 pages of text.

The result is something like a J.D. Salinger Facebook news feed. This is not optimal, but it’s not the biggest problem with Salinger.

The biggest problem is that on a subject where nuance and understanding are required, Salinger is sloppy and lazy. Its flood of information ends up being a mile wide and an inch deep. Even when presenting new details that are valuable and intriguing, Salinger manages to tell a story that is less than the sum of its parts. Then there is David Shields, who I will deal with in a moment. But for these reasons and more, this is about to get ugly…

TODAY IS THE 61ST ANNIVERSARY of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye — and the first anniversary of “The Real Holden Caulfield.”

This year “The Real Holden Caulfield” is available in every electronic format you can possibly think of. Do you have a Kindle? We have a MOBI file. Do you have a Nook? We have EPUB. Do you have a slab of mud with a USB port? We can probably accommodate that.

If you purchase “The Real Holden Caulfield” now, we’ll send you every format under the sun. In fact, if you purchase any book fromthe Fiction Advocate Store today, we’ll send you “The Real Holden Caulfield” for free. If you’ve already purchased it and you’d like a format other than PDF, write to us at fictionadvocate AT gmail DOT com and we’ll hook you up.

You can read short excerpts of “The Real Holden Caulfield” on some of our favorite blogs:The Awl, The Rumpus, andBerfrois. Then you can download the full version for $1.99.

And it’s for a good cause — in tribute to Seymour Glass, Sergeant X, Babe Gladwaller and Salinger himself, who was hospitalized for “Battle Fatigue” — or PTSD — after World War II, half of the proceeds from sales of “The Real Holden Caulfield will be donated to The Wounded Warrior Project.

***I’LL BE SENDING A CHECK TO THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT BASED ON OUR SALES THROUGH TOMORROW, SEPTEMBER 30, SO IF YOU WANT A COPY OF “THE REAL HOLDEN CAULFIELD,” NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY AND HELP A GOOD CAUSE***

THE REAL HOLDEN CAULFIED is a short e-book published to mark the 60th anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye on July 16, 2011.

And it’s for a good cause — in tribute to Seymour Glass, Sergeant X, Babe Gladwaller and Salinger himself, who was hospitalized for “Battle Fatigue” — or PTSD — after World War II, half of the proceeds from sales of “The Real Holden Caulfield will be donated to The Wounded Warrior Project.

And it’s for a good cause — in tribute to Seymour Glass, Sergeant X, Babe Gladwaller and Salinger himself, who was hospitalized for “Battle Fatigue” — or PTSD — after World War II, half of the proceeds from sales of “The Real Holden Caulfield will be donated to The Wounded Warrior Project.